1995 – 1999 Environmental Program Grants

1999

Grants Paid During 1999
Including Payments for Grants Approved in Prior Years

American Community Gardening Association $25,000
Berkeley, CA
To develop the Growing Communities Curriculum to train a new generation of community organizers in how to use community gardens to cultivate activists in low-income communities, and to enhance the power of local community members to have a positive impact on their own lives and on the urban environment. The Curriculum will, for the first time, pull together best practices, expertise, and models from the community garden movement’s collective experience and wisdom and test, evaluate, and widely distribute this information in a form that meets the needs of community gardening groups. The resulting Manual will be in English and Spanish. The Curriculum will greatly enhance the American Community Gardening Association’s (ACGA) own training program as well as be used by organizations around the country. The Curriculum will be developed and tested through two “training-the-trainers” workshops involving 60 groups. The Curriculum will be promoted within over 300 gardening organizations around the country.(First payment of a $50,000 grant)

Center for Health, Environment and Justice $35,000
Falls Church, VA
Seed money to launch their Children’s Environmental Health Project, a targeted outreach effort to give individual parents and community groups the information, tools, and networking opportunities they need to take action. The primary goal of this project is to promote grassroots involvement in protecting children from exposure to hazardous chemicals in food, air, soil and drinking water by: researching and writing a guidebook for lay audiences on children’s environmental health risks and the individual or collective actions people can take to protect children; provide ongoing support and assistance to groups and individual parents using the guidebook; using the Internet, including a list serve to disseminate information and to network groups and individuals working on these issues; and conduct briefings in five cities each year where children are at especially high risk from environmental threats.(First payment of a $50,000 grant)

Center for Watershed & Community Health $15,000
Springfield, OR
To demonstrate the replicability of the Center for Watershed and Community Health’s CDC Sustainable Communities Capacity Building Program. Four demonstration projects will show the replicability of this program to help non-profit affordable housing or low income economic development groups develop the skills, business partnerships,and networking systems needed to establish “waste-based” businesses nationwide. These businesses will divert materials from the waste stream that can be recirculated back to the market in products and services. The methodology that has been developed through research and a pilot project will now be rolled-out in four high-profile demonstration projects in Baltimore, MD, Ohio, Utah and Oregon with the Center providing training and technical help to local groups. Through these demonstration projects, a handbook, training sessions, and a website, information and assistance on replicating the program will become available to groups across the country.(Final payment of a $40,000 grant)

INFORM $20,000
New York, NY
To complete the funding for its NYC Waste Prevention Pilot Project and to replicate this pilot project in communities across the country through the creation of a Community Waste Prevention Tool Kit and the provision of research and outreach assistance. As a national leader in identifying preventive solutions to environmental problems, INFORM’s reaction to the imminent closing of NYC’s only landfill, was to launch an effort to makes the reduction of trash and conservation of resources standard practice in all NYC governmental agencies, and institutions, major contributors to the waste stream. Through a variety of means ranging from the adoption of waste prevention procurement practices to advising solid waste policy-makers, INFORM has designed a comprehensive strategy to advance municipal waste reduction. Having developed this strategy in NYC, INFORM seeks to codify and share it in a tool kit that will allow communities across the country to replicate this model approach to waste reduction.

National Association of Service and Conservation Corps $25,000
Washington, DC
For a national “train-the-trainers” program that will strengthen urban and community forestry across the United States by focusing the energies of service and conservation corps on forestry projects in their home communities. Four intensive two-day, hands-on regional training sessions (in L.A., Milwaukee, New York City, and Seattle) will provide training and materials about the tools and techniques of sustainable urban forestry to 80 senior corps staff members drawn from corps in 34 states who will return home to replicate this model training by offering mini-workshops for dozens of fellow staff members and at least 800 corps members at up to 80 corps programs nationwide. Designed by the National Association of Service and Conservation Corps (NASCC) in partnership with forestry experts and groups, the training will address such topics as best management practices for urban forests; nurturing community-based maintenance program; finding and working effectively with citizen forestry groups and urban residents.

National Dance Institute $20,000
New York, NY
For the Step-by-Step Interactive Educational Web Site. From May through December 1999 Jacques d’Amboise is hiking the Appalachian Trail as a national media effort to promote interest in the arts, education, and the environment. Elementary students across America will be able to join him “virtually” on his adventure by checking this interactive web site where a curriculum will allow them to immerse themselves in the ecology of the Trail as they follow along its 2,160 miles (Jacques will regularly call into the “virtual adventure” web site with updates). This teacher-and-student friendly site will offer a rich and dynamic curriculum focused on environmental science. It will have: a searchable database for independent research; learning games; chat rooms; and links to other sites. Curriculum guidebooks, lesson plans, and other material for teachers can be downloaded from the site.

New Ecology, Inc. $40,000
Cambridge, MA
Seed money to help launch and establish New Ecology, Inc., (NEI) a next generation environmental organization. NEI will promote and help implement local and regional eco-development initiatives in New England. Working with community-based organizations, municipalities, agencies and eco-business, New Ecology will provide assistance to develop, demonstrate and take to scale, in environmentally and economically hard-hit communities, innovative eco-development models. Under one roof NEI will house the personal and institutional networks and knowledge necessary to create, manage and capitalize on eco-development opportunities. No organization exits in New England dedicated to spearheading and facilitating such projects. Through its proactive, asset-based community development approach, New Ecology, Inc. will create a template of successful brownfields, smart growth, eco-industrial and civic environ- mental model projects whose approaches can then be replicated across the country.

Resource Renewal Institute $10,000
Delmar, NY
To establish a green plan for the State of New York as a national demonstration model of how to implement comprehensive environmental management. Based on a model pioneered and operating in the Netherlands, a green plan is a highly cooperative strategy for solving environmental problems by performance-driven covenants between government and all sectors of the economy instead of the present short-term, single-issue conflict-based approach whose success at actually improving environmental quality is coming under increasing questioning by environmentalists and business. Year one will build support for this new approach to addressing environmental issues working with business, government and non- governmental organizations. Year two will focus on creating a formal process for developing a green plan in the state, and year three will be devoted to the creating and implementation of the plan in New York State and sharing the model beyond its borders(Second payment of a $50,000 grant)

Student Conservation Association $20,000
Charlestown, NH
To develop and implement the Earth Work Career Network (EWCN), a state-of-the-art national electronic database and program and training resource offering career information and services to high school and college students, current and prospective environmental professionals, colleges and universities, placement counselors, professional associations, and alumni of the Student Conservation Association’s (SCA) programs. Though potentially serving the broadest audience, a particular aim of EWCN is to place a more representative population of individuals in the environmental work force. In addition to linking students and prospective employers for jobs and internships with each other, EWCN will sponsor regional environmental career forums, host career workshops, launch a mentoring program for SCA’s alumni and develop career materials for both potential employees and employers.(Final payment of a $50,000 grant)

The Watershed Institute $20,000
Chestnut Hill, MA
To develop the Urban Ecology Field Study Program, a model for helping urban youth attain positions of environmental leadership in their local communities, from a pilot project in Boston to a national model. The program links urban public high school students to their own communities through long-term field studies including environmental research and restoration projects. It is specifically focused on urban school systems and recognizes the value of urban ecosystems. The grant will help the Institute develop its national expansion strategy and implement it. To replicate the program, a handbook will be produced, teachers will be trained, national outreach will be conducted, and three additional school systems in other cities will be selected and the project replicated as a test of the national replication strategy which will then position the Institute to disseminate the program nationally.(First payment of a $40,000 grant)

The Wilderness Society $30,000
Washington, DC
To help establish the new national Wilderness Support Center in Durango, CO as a resource to assist the resurgence of the grassroots movement for wilderness protection. The Center will provide emerging statewide wilderness campaigns with the hands-on assistance,new tools,organizing, outreach, media, political expertise and public education skills they need. Serious wilderness work is happening in 20 states, often led by a new younger generation of advocates. This center will help them develop well- organized strategies; enhance communication and information-sharing throughout the wilderness movement, and provide hands-on, site specific assistance and training to grassroots activists across the nation-at key moments in key places. The Center will bring to these new advocates the knowledge and experience of those who have worked on historically successful wilderness campaigns combined with the best current knowledge on strategy and tactics.(First payment of a $50,000 grant)

1998

Grants Paid During 1998
Including Payments for Grants Approved in Prior Years

Center for Children’s Environmental Literature $15,000
Washington, DC
To launch their “Save The Land You Love” project to involve school children in campaigns to save threatened land in endangered ecosystems around the country. Schools will be linked to the land preservation efforts of environmental organizations in their area thus educating students to endangered ecosystem protection and enlisting student energy and excitement in the cause of land conservation.(Final Payment of a $35,000 grant)

Center for Watershed & Community Health $25,000
Springfield, OR
To demonstrate the replicability of the Center for Watershed and Community Health’s CDC Sustainable Communities Capacity Building Program. Four demonstration projects will show the replicability of this program to help non-profit affordable housing or low income economic development groups develop the skills, business partnerships, and networking systems needed to establish “waste-based” businesses nationwide. These businesses will divert materials from the waste stream that can be recirculated back to the market in products and services. Through these demonstration projects, a handbook, training sessions, and a website, information and assistance on replicating the program will become available to groups across the country.(First payment of a $40,000 grant)

The Conservation Fund $25,000
Arlington, VA
To develop a collaborative training program for “gateway communities” (those communities that border national parks, forest, wildlife refuges and other public lands) and the government agencies responsible for the resources they border. Local citizens and officials, as well as national park superintendents, wildlife refuge managers and other public land managers will be trained together to build the effective partnerships needed between local communities and agencies for the benefit of both the national resource as well as the local community. A curriculum will be developed and field tested, 5 gateway communities will be selected as demonstration sites, trained teams of public land managers and citizens from each area will develop action plans for addressing their gateway community and public land issues, the initial training will be followed-up by on-going technical assistance to each team.

Natural Resources Council of Maine $20,000
Augusta, ME
To develop a model State-of-the-Art Sustainable Forestry Audit Program in Maine that will significantly advance the protection of Maine’s 15 million acres of North Woods and be a model of sound forestry for other states. The Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM) will research, develop, and put forward recommendations for this program. The model will be shared with the Northern Forest Alliance and others.(Final payment of a $40,000 grant)

Resource Renewal Institute $35,000
Delmar, NY
To establish a green plan for the State of New York as a national demonstration model of how to implement comprehensive environmental management. Based on a model pioneered and operating in the Netherlands, a green plan is a highly cooperative strategy for solving environmental problems by performance-driven covenants between government and all sectors of the economy instead of the present short-term, single-issue, conflict-based approach whose success at actually improving environmental quality is coming under increasing questioning by environmentalists and business. Year one will build support for this new approach to addressing environmental issues working with business, government and non-governmental organizations. Year two will focus on creating a formal process for developing a green plan in the state, and year three will be devoted to the creation and implementation of the plan in New York State and sharing the model beyond its borders.(First payment of a $50,000 grant)

River Network $25,000
Portland, OR
To help launch the four-year Clean Water Organizing project. This project aims to empower citizens to protect water quality in their own communities through information distribution, leadership development and networking, training, outreach and communications, and financial support. This grant will develop a national training curriculum and allow it to be pilot tested in the Northeast. The result of this pilot testing, and of two other such tests funded by other sources, will be used to refine the curriculum before its implementation at the national level.

Save America’s Forests Fund $30,000
Washington, DC
To support a nationwide campaign to educate the public and government policy makers on the deforestation crisis in the United States. The educational efforts will include expanding information about local, national and global deforestation (including documenting environmentally and economically superior alternatives to clearcutting); developing professional educational materials with information on the deforestation crisis (including photographic reports on forest conditions); using a range of communication strategies to disseminate this information to policy makers, the media and the general public; and educating these same audiences about current policies and the need for change.

South Carolina Aquarium $20,000
Charleston, SC
To develop a comprehensive master plan for educational programs for this planned state-of-the-art aquarium that will serve as a model for zoos, aquariums, and other informal environmental learning centers nationwide. The educational programs will include a model school curriculum incorporating environmental and aquarium-related content into the state1s formal education system at every grade.(Final payment of a $100,000 grant)

Student Conservation Association $30,000
Charlestown, NH
To develop and implement the Earth Work Career Network (EWCN), a state-of-the-art national electronic database and program and training resource offering career information and services to high school and college students, current and prospective environmental professionals, colleges and universities, placement counselors, professional associations, and alumni of the Student Conservation Association1s (SCA) programs. Though potentially serving the broadest audience, a particular aim of EWCN is to place a more representative population of individuals in the environmental work force. In addition to linking students and prospective employers for jobs and internships with each other, EWCN will sponsor regional environmental career forums, host career workshops, launch a mentoring program for SCA1s alumni and develop career materials for both potential employees and employers.(First payment of a $50,000 grant.)

Toxics Action Fund $10,000
Boston, MA
Seed money to launch GREAN, the Grassroots Environmental Assistance Network. GREAN is a response to both the increase in the number of citizens groups formed at the regional and statewide level to fight toxic hazards in their communities and the lack of a formal network for these groups to discuss strategies and tactics. These organizations need structured training and guidance on running their programs and a network for them to help each other. GREAN is being created to serve that role. The Toxics Action Center will be the financial sponsor and manager of GREAN’s projects.

Trust for Public Land $20,000
New York, NY
Seed money for a model community park program designed to show that inner-city parks can be built and successfully sustained through partnerships involving local grassroots organizations. The model initiative will develop community parks where they are most needed; create a park building model that delivers park space at low costs, and will encourage the public adoption of this model in New York City and Newark, New Jersey and spread the model to cities nationwide.(Final payment of a $40,000 grant.)

World Wildlife Fund $40,000
Washington, DC
To support the development and piloting of the three main elements of a new “Marine Biodiversity Education Kit and Training Program” aimed at middle school students and educators. The Kit will include an educators guide, a short video, and a colorful wall map highlighting key marine ecoregions around the world. Through an impressive consortium of organizations, regional trainings on the Kit will be provided to educators across the country. The grant will cover the development and pilot testing of the written materials in the Kit and the concept development phase of the video.

1997

Grants Paid During 1997
Including Payments for Grants Approved in Prior Years

Keepers of the Treasures $20,000
Washington, DC
Seed money to provide training and technical help to American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian tribal cultural leaders seeking to preserve natural cultural resources. Intense regional training workshops, publications and technical assistance in partnership with the Medicine Wheel Coalition will provide tribal leaders the information, support and skills they need to protect the natural, sacred and cultural resources under their care.(Second Payment of a $40,000 grant)

Natural Resources Council of Maine $20,000
Augusta, ME
To develop a model state-of-the-art Sustainable Forestry Audit Program in Maine that will significantly advance the protection of Maine’s 15 million acres of North Woods and be a model of sound forestry for other states. The Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM) will research, develop and put forward recommendations for this program. The model will be shared with the Northern Forest Alliance and others.(First payment of a $40,000 grant)

The Nature Conservancy $20,000
Concord, NH
Seed money to launch the Great Bay Estuary Land Conservation Initiative. This initiative will develop and implement a comprehensive preservation strategy for the Great Bay Watershed and in doing so create a national model for the scientific understanding and preservation of coastal estuarine systems. The Conservancy will break new ground in advancing our understanding of estuarine and in doing so will create a new national model for estuary protection.

New York Parks and Conservation Association $10,000
Albany, NY
To launch Greenways New York: a model strategy to encourage and support a coordinated statewide greenway program through the provision of close-to-home technical assistance and other support to grassroots community efforts to develop Greenways. In partnership with the Conservation Fund and the National Park Service, this model will be made available to other states.(Final payment of a $25,000 grant)

Outdoor Explorations, Inc. $15,000
Cambridge, MA
For its Boston-based pilot project: From Resistance to Residence. By linking community members (including those with cognitive disabilities and mental illness) through their work in environmental community service efforts, this project seeks to demonstrate that community environmental projects can be used to change neighborhood attitudes towards the disabled and thus remove obstacles to the creation of innovative neighborhood-based housing opportunities for people with mental illness and cognitive disabilities.(Final payment of a $30,000 grant)

Pacific Rivers Council $40,000
Eugene, OR
To protect the headwaters of the Conasauga River (which has the highest biodiversity of any river in the temperate world) in the Chattahoochee and Cherokee National forests and in so doing demonstrate that the new approaches to public land management being pioneered by the Pacific Rivers Council in the west can also work elsewhere and provide the basis to advance aquatic conservation within the entire national forest system. The Council will work in partnership with the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition.

Scenic America $15,000
Washington, DC
To launch the Scenic Conservation Resource Center. Serving as both a clearinghouse for information, facts, photographs, and studies and a source of special intense technical assistance to states starting-up statewide or local scenic conservation groups, the Center will assist local activists focusing on scenic protection issues ranging from billboard control to growth management.(Final payment of a $35,000 grant)

South Carolina Aquarium $40,000
Charleston, SC
To develop a comprehensive master plan for educational programs for this planned state-of-the art aquarium that will serve as a model for zoos, aquariums, and other informal environmental learning centers nationwide. The educational programs will include a model school curriculum incorporating environmental and aquarium-related content into the state’s formal education system at every grade.(Second payment of a $100,000 grant.)

Trust for Public Land $20,000
New York, NY
Seed money for a model community park program designed to show that inner-city parks can be built and successfully sustained through partnerships involving local grassroots organizations. The model initiative will develop community parks where they are most needed; create a park-building model that delivers park space at low costs, and will encourage the public adoption of this model in New York City and Newark, New Jersey and spread the model to cities nation-wide.(First payment of a $40,000 grant.)

1996

Grants Paid During 1996
Including Payments for Grants Approved in Prior Years

Center for Children’s Environmental Literature $20,000
Washington, DC
To launch their “Save The Land You Love” project to involve school children in campaigns to save threatened land in endangered ecosystems around the country. Schools will be linked to the land preservation efforts of environmental organizations in their area thus educating students to endangered ecosystem protection and enlisting student energy and excitement in the cause of land conservation.First payment of a $35,000 grant.)

Isles $15,000
Trenton, NJ
For the Urban Site Remediation project, a model to expedite and humanize the cleanup and redevelopment process for toxic industrial sites (“brownfields”) in older, low-income, minority urban areas across the country by engaging, educating and empowering residents and making them partners in the process.(Final payment of a $30,000 grant.)

Keepers of the Treasures $20,000
Washington, DC
Seed money to provide training and technical help to American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian tribal cultural leaders seeking to preserve natural cultural resources. Intense regional training workshops, publications, and technical assistance in partnership with the Medicine Wheel Coalition will provide tribal leaders the information, support and skills they need to protect the natural, sacred and cultural resources under their care.(First payment of a $40,000 grant.)

New York Parks and Conservation Association $15,000
Albany, NY
To provide seed money to launch Greenways New York: a model strategy to encourage and support a coordinated statewide greenway program through the provision of close-to-home technical assistance and other support to grassroots community efforts to develop Greenways. In partnership with the Conservation Fund and the National Park Service this model will be made available to other states.(First payment of a $25,000 grant.)

Outdoor Explorations, Inc. $15,000
Cambridge, MA
For its Boston-based pilot project: From Resistance to Residence. By linking community members (including those with cognitive disabilities and mental illness) through their work in environmental community service efforts, this project seeks to demonstrate that community environmental projects can be used to change neighborhood attitudes towards the disabled and thus remove obstacles to the creation of innovative neighborhood-based housing opportunities for people with mental illness and cognitive disabilities.(First payment of a $30,000 grant.)

Scenic America $20,000
Washington, DC
One-time grant to launch the Scenic Conservation Resource Center. Serving as both a clearinghouse for information, facts, photographs, and studies and a source of special intense technical assistance to states starting-up statewide or local scenic conservation groups, the Center will assist local activists focusing on scenic protection issues ranging from billboard control to growth management.(First payment of a $35,000 grant.)

South Carolina Aquarium $40,000
Charleston, SC
One-time grant to develop a comprehensive master plan for educational programs for this planned state-of-the art aquarium that will serve as a model for zoos, aquariums, and other informal environmental learning centers nationwide. The educational programs will include a model school curriculum incorporating environmental and aquarium-related content into the state’s formal education system at every grade.(First payment of a $100,000 grant.)

1995

Grants Paid During 1995
Including Payments for Grants Approved in Prior Years

Alternatives for Community and Environment, Inc. $20,000
Newton, MA
Seed money for the Roxbury Environmental Empowerment Project (REEP) an innovative, community-based model for environmental education and action for long term environmental protection in a low-income community involving neighborhood organizations, youth and a law school clinic.(Final payment of a $50,000 grant.)

Brown University $400,000
Providence, RI
To develop a model undergraduate interdisciplinary environmental studies program which combines rigorous work in the classroom with lab work in the field, includes environmental apprenticeships; promotes a campus-wide environmental ethic through the “Brown is Green” program; and facilitates networking with other collegiate environmental programs.(Final payment of a five-year grant.)

Citizens’ Environmental Coalition $10,000
Albany, NY
To support the development and dissemination of a model environmental quality in schools program: “Healthy Schools” featuring technical support to develop and implement a model in New York State and the production of a manual for the national dissemination of the model.(Final payment of a $30,000 grant.)

Coral Reef Alliance $10,000
Berkeley, CA
Seed money to launch the Coral Reef Conservation Program to address the destruction of coral reef ecosystems through the use of education, coalition building and the resources (both fiscal and other) of a national network of concerned scuba divers that they will organize and energize.(Final payment of a $20,000 grant.)

Environmental Careers Organization (The) $25,000
Boston, MA
To support The New England Environmental Diversity Collaboration in its efforts to diversify the membership, agenda, staff, governing boards and operating cultures of a number of New England-based environmental organizations.(Final payment of a $75,000 grant.)

Isles $15,000
Trenton, NJ
For the Urban Site Remediation project, a model to expedite and humanize the cleanup and redevelopment process for toxic industrial sites (“brownfields”) in older, low-income, minority urban areas across the country by engaging, educating and empowering residents and making them partners in the process.(First payment of a $30,000 grant.)

Land Trust Alliance, Inc. (The) $30,000
Washington, DC
To launch The Land Trust Alliance’s Land Trust Information Center which will serve the more than 1,000 land trusts across the country and support for a model information dissemination project and related pilot programs in New York State.(Final payment of a $60,000 grant)

New York City Audubon Society $10,000
New York, NY
For a demonstration project in Jamaica Bay to show the feasibility of the low-cost restoration of urban wetland habitats on public parklands by a non-profit environmental group while providing and promoting public access.(Final payment of a $20,000 grant.)

Sonoran Institute $20,000
Tucson, AZ
To support as part of a larger educational effort in partnership with the Conservation Fund, the production and dissemination of a book to provide “gateway” communities adjacent to national and state parks, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas, effective community-driven models for managing growth adjacent to these cherished national resources.

Annual Report

Update

The Foundation annually alternates its new grantmaking between its Mental Health, AIDS and Environmental program areas. In 2019, the Foundation will be making new grants in the Environmental program area. Grants will be made at the Fall meeting. Initial letters of inquiry must be received before September 1, 2019. more....